"Farmer,.Phillip.Jose.-.A.Barnstormer.In.Oz" - читать интересную книгу автора (Farmer Phillip Jose)

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Philip Jos6 Farmer

He was going to say that she had legs almost as good as Glinda's, but he decided that that might not be discreet.

His mother got a job as a dancer in a chorus line in a very successful Broadway production. Shortly afterwards, she met Lincoln Stover, the only child of a wealthy stockbroker. Lincoln was ten years older than Dorothy, and he was a regular stage-door Johnny.

Hank explained this term.

"His parents came from distinguished families, Massachusetts pioneers who came from England in the early 1630s."

Lincoln Stover, Hank's father, was born in Oyster Bay, Long Island, an area where great estates were owned by such as Louis Tiffany and F. W. Woolworth and where Theodore Roosevelt had a home, his summer White House. Lincoln's parents expected him to follow in his father's footsteps, and so he didЧexcept that he did not marry a daughter of a wealthy New York family. Instead, he fell almost violently in love with Dorothy and proposed marriage.

Mr. and Mrs. Robert Stover, Hank's grandparents, were both affronted and aghast. Lincoln just could notЧcould notЧmarry the penniless and pedigreeless daughter and niece of poor dirt farmers. Though threatened with disinheritance, Lincoln ran off with Dorothy to the wild state of Nevada, where the parson who married them failed to ask the age of the bride.

Perhaps it was the fait accompli that caused the Robert Stovers to tell Lincoln Stover and Dorothy to come home, all was forgiven. A second and lawful marriage was made. And, after Lincoln's father and mother had gotten to know Dorothy well, they not only accepted her, but came to love her.

"Which was pretty good for such snobs," Hank said.

"Your mother was a remarkable person," Glinda said. "Also, very lovable."

"If I weren't so modest, I'd tell you how much like her I am," Hank said.

Both laughed.

Ah, he thought, if only you would love me, Glinda. You'd find me a giant not only in size but in love.

He resumed his biography. When the United States declared war on Germany, August 6, 1917, he was in prep school. He'd quit during his last semester to enlist in the Army Air Service in February, 1918. The previous summer,

A BARNSTORMER IN OZ

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he'd taken flying lessons. In September he was transported to France, and he flew a Spad pursuit from September 20th until November 11th, the day of the Armistice. He'd been in five dogfights but had shot down only one plane, and he'd had to share that victory with his commander.

When he was discharged, he'd bummed around in Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Italy, and Spain. On returning, he'd finished his prep school education and had started at Yale. But he was passionately in love with flying, and he was too old and experienced to enjoy being a freshman. The summer of 1921 he'd told his parents that he wasn't going back to college. Not for a while, anyway. He wanted to be a barnstormer. Lincoln and Dorothy objected very much, but he was as bullheaded as they. Off he'd gone with the Jenny his father had purchased for him, promising to pay him back from the money he made on his tours.

"Dad refused to have anything to do with me until I gave up all that romantic idiocy, as he called it. Mother had begged me to finish school first and then go, as she put it, skylarking. She was mad at me, too, but she did write me long letters. Oh, yes, I forgot. The housekey. She gave it to me just before I embarked for France. She said it had always brought her luck, and maybe it would for me. I certainly would need it, she said."

Glinda handed the key back to him. "It has been in many far-off places."

He then told her again how he had happened to pass through the green cloud into this world.

"Very rarely," she said, "there is a brief opening in the walls that separate our two worlds. Usually, they occur far above ground, though at one time there must have been some at surface level. They are a natural unpredictable phenomenon, and, for some reason, it is much more difficult to get from your world into mine than the other way around."

"I can't go back?" Hank said. "But my mother..."

"It's not impossible. Just hard. As I was about to say before you interrupted, stories handed down by our ancestors indicate that they passed through some openings into this world about 1500 or so years ago. More than one tribe and parts of tribes and some individuals came through. Animals, birds, and reptiles, too. And, of course, insects.